User:JustinePorto/Public toilets in the Solomon Islands

Public toilets in the Solomon Islands are rare, with most being found in hotels or at local markets and toilet paper is not provided. Open defecation is practiced as a result of the lack of toilet access, a problem experienced in the Global South.

Public toilets
Ministry of Health and Medical Services (MHMS) and Honiara City Council (HCC) were given a USD$20,000 grant from the World Health Organization to improve the Honiara Central Market. Among the initiatives at the market were improving public toilets for patron use, installing water and providing sanitation services.

Public toilets in Guadalcanal in the early 2000s could often be found at hotels. They did not provide toilet paper. On Tikopia in the 1990s, there were no toilets, public or private. The reef was a place where people commonly practiced open defecation. Open defecation was practices on the beach and near the mouth of the Mataniko River on Guadalcanal. Visitors to Alu Island in the 1990s were advised to bring their own toilet paper.

Regional and global situation impacting public toilets in the Solomon Islands
Public toilet access around the world is most acute in the Global South, with around 3.6 billion people, 40% of the world's total population, lacking access to any toilet facilities. 2.3 people in the the Global South do not have toilet facilities in their residence. Despite the fact that the United Nation made a declaration in 2010 that clean water and sanitation is a human right, little has been done in many places towards addressing this on a wider level.

Public toilets, depending on their design, can be tools of social exclusion. Around one in three women in the world in 2016 lacked access to a toilet. The lack of single-sex women's toilets in developing countries makes it harder for women to participate in public life, in education and in the workplace. In developing countries, unisex public toilets have been a disaster because they make women feel unsafe and fail to consider local religious beliefs.

Homosexual American servicemen sometimes used public toilets in bigger cities in the Pacific during World War II as places to have trysts. In the 1980s and 1990s, many people in the Pacific region had the misconception that HIV and AIDS could be transmitted by using public toilets.

Foreigners visiting the South Pacific in the 1990s were advised to bring their own white toilet paper, and tampons or sanitary napkins as they were not commonly found in the region. Septic systems and any sewage systems were not strong enough in the 1990s for tampons to be thrown into them.

German notions of cultural codes around the usage of public toilets has been exported to many parts of the world as a result of German colonialism, but many places in Africa and the Pacific continue to challenge those norms around cleanliness well into the 2010s. Local resistance to toilet cleanliness justified further German repression on the part of the local population during their colonial period.